Stream of Consciousness Blogging

Peeps in the Hood

We have lived in our house for over six years now and we know two and a half neighbors. The half is the lady across the street who I think is named Becky, who we’ve talked to maybe four times. She’s totally nice and one time showed me her sweet glass art in the garage, but I’m only counting her as a half since we don’t exchange treats at Christmas. The other neighbors we know are the crazies across the street and the couple we should be friends with two houses down. In case you need a refresher, you can find it here. Right, we are complete shit at socializing with the people that live around us.

What we discovered last night, however, is that if you light fireworks in front of your house, neighbors will flock to you. Well, let me be more specific. If you light fireworks after the legal date you’re supposed to light fireworks, neighbors will flock to you. It might not be the most pleasant of interactions, but at least it’s an interaction. The first neighbor that approached I can honestly say we’ve never seen in our lives. I mean we’ve never seen him leaving in his car, mowing the lawn (oh wait, that’s because they have a brick front yard instead of grass) or getting the mail. And, our first interaction started out a bit rough. First of all he crossed the street with a purpose, headed straight for us. When he got right in front of us, the conversation went like this:

Rob: “Hey man, how’s it goin’?”

Neighbor (in a nasal tone): “Not good!”

Rob: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. How come?”

Neighbor: “Well, my dog’s a wreck. People have been lighting off fireworks for over a month now. We put up with it until now, but it’s past the date.”

Me: “Oh, we thought today was the last day.”

Neighbor (super nasaly): “Nope! The dates were from the 26th of June to the 26th of July.”

Rob (killing him with kindness): “Where do you live? I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

Neighbor: “Just across the street over there.”

Rob: “Well, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Rob.”

Neighbor (walking towards Rob): “I’m Dave.”

What’s so cool about Rob’s approach is that he basically forced this guy to be nice. Mr. “not good” was suddenly shaking all of our hands and was all like, “Well, if you only have one more, you may as well light it.” What is super awesome though is that the last firework was super duper annoying. It did that loud whistling sound that makes you want to kill people and a shit ton of popping. Oops!

The second neighbor that approached was the one next door. Yes, that’s right, we don’t even know the neighbor that lives right next door to us. Give us some slack though, they’ve only been there for like two months. This neighbor was warning Rob that the police showed up at their house within like five minutes when they started doing fireworks the night before. Guess who probably called them? Mr. “not good” most likely. Dude has had enough!

So, we now know like 3 neighbors (I’m only giving the new guys quarter status at the moment). I mean we’ll probably never talk to them again but whatever. I’m still counting it.